The Elector designated navigation and commerce as the most significant undertakings of his state, and strove energetically to acquire overseas colonies and become involved in the Atlantic slave trade; as such, a powerful navy was needed to defend these interests.

However, his grandson Frederick William I held little interest in colonial affairs or maintaining a powerful navy, preferring to expend state revenues on the Prussian Army.

Due to the state's continental position and the lack of easily defensible natural borders, Prussia had to concentrate its military preparations on the army.

Prussia nevertheless built up a small naval force of 13 makeshift warships (mixing of Galleys, Galiots and Gunboat) during the Seven Years' War.

[3] Even so, the Prussian monarch wanted to take part in international maritime commerce and therefore founded several trading firms (with varying success).

He had made a number of journeys abroad and recognized the value of a fleet to support commercial interests and to protect one's own navigation.

The German Confederation possessed practically no fleet of its own, but relied upon the allied powers of Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Denmark.

During the First War of Schleswig of 1848–1851, the failure of this strategy became clear because Great Britain and the Netherlands remained neutral and Denmark became the enemy.

Besides Prince Adalbert, other important figures of this early period were Prussian naval officers Karl Rudolf Brommy and Ludwig von Henk, who eventually became an admiral in the Imperial German Navy.

Even though Prussia consistently understood itself as a continental land power, its rise and fall were closely bound up with the destiny of the Brandenburger-Prussian-German naval forces.

But after only 15 years, Prussia handed over its young naval forces to the rising centralized German state, an act which would have been unthinkable for the Prussian Army.